


Hey, Remember That Time?

by marginaliana



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-24
Updated: 2008-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:22:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine memories from the life of Jack Harkness, in no particular order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hey, Remember That Time?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration: That Time by Regina Spektor. Beta by aunty_marion.

1.

What on Earth can Ianto be eating, Jack wonders, that's causing him to make such delicious slurping noises? He pauses in the doorway of the kitchen and watches as Ianto licks some sort of juice from his fingers and palm, tongue moving deftly and firmly against his skin. Jack makes an appreciative noise and Ianto looks up, a faint smile quirking up the edges of his lips.

"Tangerine, sir?" he offers.

> Jack's cover was pretty close to being blown, and he knew it.
> 
> "Tangerine?" his companion offered him. Jack turned from the window and watched as she held out one of the fruits from the overflowing basket on the table. He couldn't afford to draw any more suspicion, so he took it, rubbing the rind with the tips of his fingers.
> 
> "Thank you, Prolyl," he said.
> 
> This was the problem with undercover work, Jack thought. The Time Agency had an excellent expedition preparation department, but there were some things even they couldn't do. Physically he was indistinguishable from a true Scorbutic – pale skin showing dark purple veins underneath, teeth serrated to a fine edge – but inside he wanted to scream. Nothing could prepare a man for a month of eating only tangerines.
> 
> He hated them now. Hated the texture and taste of the rind as his teeth slit through it, hated the seeds that caught in his throat, hated the sickly sweet juice that coated his fingers no matter how often he washed them. If he had to stay here much longer, Jack thought, he'd go mad, just from this. Thankfully, he figured his time was just about up.
> 
> He bared his teeth at her and bit into it, letting the juices run down his face in the Scorbutic gesture of culinary appreciation.
> 
> Prolyl crossed to Jack's side and rested one hand on the open curtain.
> 
> "You do not feast as the others do," she said. "The planet where your family has taken refuge must be shockingly low in food sources. Do the trees not grow as fruitfully there?"
> 
> Jack looked out at the fields filled with row after row of tangerine trees, their boughs lush and weighted down with fruit.
> 
> "They _are_ more rare," he said. "Something of a delicacy." Jack slipped one hand into his robes and undid the snap on his holster. With the other hand, he lifted the tangerine to his mouth and took another bite.

Jack shudders and Ianto's face falls.

"Sorry," says Jack. "Just. Not really a fan of tangerines."

 

2.

He rises through the lift and there's Suzie, explaining everything so patiently to the police woman, and Jack would smack himself in the face except he's trying not to be noticed. He's worked with Suzie a long time, almost five years now, and he ought to know her by now, ought to understand what makes her tick. But apparently he doesn't, not if what's happening right in front of him is anything to go by.

> The first time Suzie OD'ed on alien technology it was just the two of them running the whole of Torchwood Three. Jack had come down from his office at two in the morning and found her, head bowed over the desk and the fingers of one outstretched hand twitching against a pile of paperwork.
> 
> "Suzie?" he said. When she didn't respond, he rested a hand on her shoulder and leaned in tentatively. "Suzie?" He lifted her head and she gazed up at him with sightless eyes, red from the pulsing lights of the Syrenian music box clasped in her other hand. Jack pulled his hand back into the sleeve of his coat and reached down to take it from her with a sigh.
> 
> When the wave pulses cleared themselves from her system eight hours later, Suzie woke in the medical bay with what Jack knew must have been a splitting headache. He'd left the lights on in there deliberately, and he paused at the top of the stairs listening to her groans.
> 
> "That was a stupid fucking thing to do, Suzie Costello," he said loudly. Suzie snorted and then cringed, lifting a hand to her head.
> 
> "Yeah," she said, voice echoing. "Yeah. It was just so beautiful."

But now that he knows what he's looking for, Jack can see it, can read her face like a window into her mind. He's afraid. Suzie is thinking about how beautiful the glove is, how it gives her something she can't get anywhere else. She's thinking about power, and how easy it's become to surrender herself to the darkness inside the metal. He can read the overdose in the lines of her face, read the addiction in the greenish hollows under her eyes.

She shoots him, and Jack dies, and then he gets up again like a bad penny, and for a moment he thinks that's all it will take to get through to her.

"Put down the gun," Jack says, and holds out his hand. "Suzie, it's over." Suzie's mouth falls open and he's shocked her out of that frightening numbness and for once, Jack thinks, it's all going to be okay.

When she pulls the trigger, all Jack can think is that there are no second chances.

 

3.

"Oooh," says Gwen. "That's pretty. All the little lights."

Jack grunts in acknowledgment and doesn't turn to look at her, still preoccupied with gagging their captives. He hears Gwen tap her earpiece.

"It's definitely a pattern of some sort. Hey, Tosh, does this sound familiar? Red light, blue light, blue light, green light, red light."

Owen's voice comes in Jack's ear. "No time for games, children, we're trying to capture some aliens."

"Sod off," says Gwen, but Jack can hear the smile in her voice. He finishes tying the last knot and turns, just as Gwen reaches down for the object that had caught her attention.

"Don't!" says Jack.

> "Be not lost _so poorly_ in your thoughts," said Jack, giving John a glare.
> 
> "Look, I'm sorry!" said John. "I swear the file didn't say anything about this." He gave Jack a look, then quickly went back to tapping at his handheld device, biting his lip to stifle his obvious laughter. Jack opened his mouth, then thought better of it and shut it again, frowning.
> 
> "Yes, right," said John. "I'm sure we can figure out something. Bloody technology. That department's always underfunded."
> 
> "Thou cockered rump-fed maggot-pie!" Jack growled.
> 
> "Oi!" said John. "I said sorry. No need to get like that."
> 
> Jack waved a hand at his throat.
> 
> "Oh, you can't help it," said John. "Whatever you're thinking gets filtered before it comes out, seems like." Jack nodded forcefully and smacked John on the back of the head.
> 
> "I was about to say that this is an improvement, but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, try using charades and tap your nose when I'm right," John suggested. "That way you won't strain your neck. Or mine."
> 
> "Thou art only mark'd for hot vengeance and the rod of heaven," said Jack darkly. John snickered.
> 
> "Yes, yes, I've heard that before. The good news is," he said, tapping the screen again, "I think I can fix it…" He paused.
> 
> "Thou sham'st the music of sweet news by playing it to me with so sour a face," said Jack warily.
> 
> "Yes, well," said John, "the bad news is that I think you're going to have to go to Denmark in 1450 or so. Err, and have sex with a prince. And pour it in his ear? Oh, I can't be reading this right." He turned the screen sideways and squinted.
> 
> Jack scowled. This is what I get, he thought, for being the designated alien object tester.
> 
> "Out of my sight!" he growled. "Thou dost infect my eyes."

"What is it, Jack?" Gwen asks, her hand thankfully stopped several inches from the device. Jack pulls a storage bag from one of the pockets of his coat and pokes the object into it with a nearby stick.

"Oh, you know," he says, "your standard alien Elizabethan-era Earth Cliff's Notes. Only with bonus mind-reading."

 

4.

Jack finds Owen outside the club, leaning on a railing and smoking a cigarette. At first he doesn't say anything, just relishes the silence that always seems more powerful after you've come from being surrounded by noise.

Owen blows out a long plume of smoke and the acrid aroma is familiar.

"Hey, how come you can smoke?" Jack wonders. "I thought you didn't need to breathe." It's only after the sentence is out that he realizes how cruel it might be, especially since they've just come from a club full of people drinking and fucking, both of which had been some of Owen's favourite activities, before.

"I don't, as such," says Owen, not turning. "But I trained my muscles to do it anyway. Smoke goes in, smoke goes out. Close enough." He shrugs. "I didn't smoke when I was alive, you know. Became a doctor right when everyone was finding out how terrible these things are. But now that it doesn't matter…"

> "I say, they print the most absurd things in this paper," said Rich.
> 
> "Are you reading the Daily Mirror _again_?" asked Jack incredulously. He filled in a line of the crossword – "Talked of money received by corrupt office-holder (9)" as "incumbent" – without looking up. "Don't even try to tell me it's for research purposes." Beside him, he could hear Alex stifle a laugh with a cough and a creak as he leaned further back in his chair.
> 
> "That was only the one time," said Rich, annoyed, "and anyway I found out about the Luffa infestation that way so don't you dare shoot your mouth off about it. Unless you'd rather have been hung upside down naked and left to dry."
> 
> Jack looked up and waggled his eyebrows. "Don't knock it 'till you've tried it." Alex's cough was louder this time.
> 
> "Anyway," said Rich pointedly. "This is the Guardian, totally respectable, and yet they're trying to tell me that there was some sort of vast conspiracy by tobacco companies to hide the research about smoking and lung cancer."
> 
> Jack paused. "Yes, so, what's absurd about that?" he asked.
> 
> "Don't be ridiculous, Jack. Nobody could hide a secret that big for that long. Surely they'd have been found out years ago!"
> 
> Jack looked past Rich at their secret underground lair, complete with alien artifacts, a rift in space and time, and a cage full of fluorescent purple bunnies gnawing on what appeared to be a Kylie Minogue CD. He cocked his head and exchanged a glance with Alex.
> 
> "Rich, mate," said Alex, "remind me again – _how_ long have you worked here?"

Owen gives Jack a look sideways out of the corner of his eyes. "Doesn't matter for you, either, eh, mate?" he says. "Want one?" he offers. Jack hesitates, watching the curl of smoke wind around Owen's head. Then he takes it.

 

5.

"You're sure plowing through that stuff," says Gwen, giggling. It's three in the morning and she's completely high on alien gas. Jack's there to keep an eye on her, sure, but he's also _starving_, and Ianto always keeps the kitchen well stocked with breakfast foods. "I suppose we could call you a _cereal killer_," Gwen continues.

Jack throws back his head and laughs, then dips the spoon into his Frosties and takes an exaggerated bite. "Oh ymmf," he says, crunching and then swallowing. "I'm evil, all right."

"You _are_ evil," says Ianto, setting down a fresh bottle of milk on the conference table, "evil for making me listen to puns like that. It should be against the law."

> "Oi, stop it at once, Jack Harkness," Rose said, giggling a little. A hank of blond hair fell into her eyes and she brushed it back behind one ear impatiently. "Only you could make that look sexy."
> 
> Jack licked the back of the spoon and raised an eyebrow. He'd always liked giggly.
> 
> "Especially since they were originally designed to decrease sex drive," said the Doctor, setting a bottle of milk on the TARDIS console. His expression was bland.
> 
> Jack paused, spoon halfway to his mouth.
> 
> "Really?" That was the trouble with the Doctor, Jack thought. You never knew when he was putting you on. Jack had found he liked that rather more than he liked giggly.
> 
> "Yes. These have a bit more sugar than the original version, though. Explains why you like them."
> 
> "Sweet, but with substance," Jack said. "I can never resist that."
> 
> The Doctor gave Jack a long look, then pushed the box closer to him.
> 
> "Have another bowl," he said. "Maybe it'll keep you from spending quite so much time in the toilet."

"You know you love bad puns," says Jack. "Admit it. You're British."

Ianto settles into a chair and grabs another of the cereal boxes.

"I'm Welsh. That doesn't count."

"Ooh, snap!" says Gwen, pointing at Jack. "Snappity snap snap!"

Jack snorts but doesn't reply. He's already given Gwen plenty of reason to kick his arse when she comes down from the gas.

"Come on, Ianto," he says, picking up the box of Frosties. "Doesn't this adorable little cartoon make you want to let loose your inner child?"

"I have no inner child," says Ianto, deadpan. "I was born this old."

"Oh, I doubt that," says Jack. He waggles the box of Frosties and speaks as the mascot, affecting his silliest growly voice. "Why Snap, Crackle, and Pop, what delicious little elves you are. I could just _eat you up_!" He gives Ianto the face, the one that says "play with me," the one he knows is almost irresistible. Ianto's lips twitch and he picks up the other box.

"Oh, Tony," he says, voice pitched high, "I bet you're a tiger in the sack."

 

6.

"Why haven't you killed me? Or retconned me, at the very least?" Ianto asks, his face still wet. He kneels on the floor, glaring at Jack with defiant eyes. Jack is thankful that the others have gone now; he'll need time to find a satisfactory answer to that question.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Ianto continues. "She was my everything. She was my purpose."

> Jack strode along the moving sidewalk and turned the corner at Schwarzen and Delancy. The air cushion propelled him onwards past his favourite bakery, and he waved at the owner through the window, getting a three-tentacle salute in return. The next block was the library. Jack didn't often spend much time there, to be honest, but he enjoyed passing by. The building was magnificent.
> 
> He paused in front of it now, eyes caught not by the splendour of the architecture but by something small and white and out of place, carried by the air cushion to bounce repeatedly against one of the stone columns of the outer fence. Jack leaned down to pick it up, identifying it as a human tooth when he got close enough.
> 
> Then he blinked his eyes and everything changed. He was in what appeared to be a hospital room, bright lights shining into his eyes and a stiff, uncomfortable mattress under his back.
> 
> "Wha'?" said Jack. He held his eyes firmly open, not sure if it was a good idea to blink again. Then a figure loomed over him, and Jack recognized Lostrian, one of the members of the Time Agency High Council.
> 
> "Your memories have been taken," said Lostrian, his voice disapproving. "Your transgressions have been erased. Don't let it happen again."
> 
> "Wait, what?" asked Jack. "Don't let _what_ happen again?" But the other man had already turned and walked away without a reply. As the door slid shut behind him, Jack deliberately loosened his unconsciously clenched fists. "All right," he murmured. "We can do this the hard way."

"You'll find a new purpose," says Jack as Ianto crumples into a ball at his feet. "Or one will find you."

 

7.

"Oh, my god," says Ianto.

"Mmmm?" says Jack, but he doesn't look up. By now he's learned to distinguish Ianto's shocked-but-amused voice from his shocked-and-frightened or shocked-and-righteously-angry voice. Ianto ignores him anyway and leaves the filing cabinet hanging open as he crosses to the doorway of the archives.

"Gwen! Tosh!" he calls up. "Come and see this!"

His attention caught by Ianto's obvious glee, Jack finally wrenches his attention away from the Snargarian music box. As he turns, his gaze passes over the label on the open file drawer.

"Torchwood history – 1982/09/01 – 1982/12/01"

"It looks like the 80s vomited on you," Ianto murmurs. Suddenly, Jack realizes what Ianto must be looking at.

"Shit!" he says.

> Jack put the finishing touches on his outfit and stepped back to examine himself in the full length mirror.
> 
> Neon pink sweatband? Check!  
> Neon green socks rolled down into squishy puffs just above the ankles? Check!  
> White mesh shirt cut off at the shoulder to expose his biceps? Check!  
> Shit-eating grin? Oh, check!
> 
> Jack waggled his eyebrows at himself. "Knock 'em dead, tiger!" he said. He cocked the door open with his hip and began to sing under his breath as he ascended the stairs. "Let's get physical, physical!"

Jack hops to his feet, but Ianto dodges backwards and hands the photo to Gwen before Jack can snatch it out of his hand. Gwen bursts into delighted laughter.

"It was Halloween!" Jack protests. "There was a costume contest! I came in first place!"

 

8.

Jack taps his headset. "See anything unusual?" For once, he hopes they don't find anything. He's tired, they all are; three people trying to do the work of five, one just woken from hundreds of years of torture, and all three having witnessed the deaths of two friends and countless citizens besides. The Rift doesn't seem to want to give them a break, though.

Ianto's voice hums a negative in his ear. "Nobody here but us chickens," Ianto says. "Well, pigeons."

Jack snorts, causing a few of the birds on his side of the bell tower to startle, fluttering up into the air and cooing wildly. The sound is oddly familiar and Jack feels his chest seize with an emotion he can't quite define.

> It was lonely in their new home with no one to play with. Jack was bored; he couldn't play Daleks and Time Lords all by himself. There was his mother, but Jack found himself wary of her, as if she'd been fundamentally changed in the last few weeks. He wonders if he ought to have been changed, too, only he feels just the same as ever.
> 
> Jack mostly spent his days alone. Behind their new house was a wild wood, impossibly gnarled trees twisting together into a Gordian knot of a playhouse. Their yellow leaves fluttered pale in the sunlight, and caramel-colored berries crunched underneath his feet as he walked.
> 
> Six weeks after the move he was out in the wood and came upon an Incomitatus with a broken wing, hunched protectively inside a whorl of branches. Its other four wings fluttered wildly in a flurry of shimmering, pale blue lights as he scooped it tenderly into the crook of his arm, but it calmed when he stroked one finger between its eyes.
> 
> "Don't worry," Jack told the bird solemnly. "I'll take care of you." He turned back toward the house, ducking under a low hanging branch. Then an idea occurred to Jack and he felt something in his stomach lighten. "When your wing is healed, you can be my pet! I've always wanted a pet, but my mother says I'm too young." He paused then and looked up at a patch of sky just visible between the branches.
> 
> "So maybe we won't tell her about you," Jack continued. "It'll be our secret, okay? You know, I think I'll call you "Blue," 'cause of your feathers and all." The Incomitatus gave a mournful coo as they came out of the edge of the woods into the warm, sunny clearing behind the house.
> 
> "Hey, none of that," said Jack. "It'll be brilliant. Now," he said, "wait right here while I get a box for your nest, okay?" He settled the bird carefully onto the top of the woodpile and went inside, listening with a pleased feeling to the rustling of its feathers.
> 
> He was only gone a few seconds, scrabbling in the entry hall closet for a spare box and some rags, but when he came out the Incomitatus was gone. Seated in its place was one of the neighborhood cats, looking suspiciously fat and very, very satisfied.
> 
> "No!" said Jack, and dropped the box to grab up the cat by the scruff of its neck. With a yowl it scrambled away from him, spitting out one battered, pale blue feather as it ran. Jack bent down to pick up the feather, still wet with the cat's saliva.
> 
> Jack hadn't cried when his father died, hadn't cried at Gray's disappearance, hadn't cried when they'd left the only home he'd ever known. But now, crouched in the dirt, he felt something break inside him. He clutched the feather to his chest and simply bawled.
> 
> "I shouldn't have let go," Jack whimpered. "I shouldn't have let go."

The birds in the church make a mournful noise, and looking more closely Jack can see that some of them have more than the Earth standard of two wings. He leans against the wall of the tower and raises a clenched hand to his mouth, as if trying to stifle the wave of emotion he can feel bubbling up inside him. He knows what it is now; it's grief for those he's lost, grief for those he knows he's going to lose.

After a long moment, he crouches down and carefully reaches out a hand to one of the birds, sliding the tip of his index finger between its eyes. He taps his headset. "I think I know what's happening here," he reports, voice perfectly even. "But it's okay. They're harmless."

 

9.

Jack is dead. He doesn't know if it will stick this time. He doesn't know if he wants it to, honestly. There is something to be said for death, for peace. And he died in the line of duty, which pleases him even though he knows he had other motives as well.

But there is something to be said for life, too. There is Gwen's smile, gap-toothed and beautiful. There is the way Owen never lets himself look proud unless he thinks no one is watching. There is the way Tosh can make even the most impossible piece of technology sit up and beg at her touch.

And there is Ianto. Being dead leaves Jack a lot of time to think about Ianto.

> He pressed his lips to Ianto's palm, then sucked the index finger into his mouth. It tasted faintly of coffee, and Jack knew that it had been his delighted pounce earlier that had caused Ianto's hand to tremble enough to spill. Licking from one finger to the next, Jack paid extra attention to the hollows between. He rubbed his nose against Ianto's fingertips and received an affectionate series of taps in return.
> 
> Moving upward, Jack kissed Ianto's wrist, mouthing at the tendons he could see and feel beneath the pale skin. He nipped at the sensitive skin on the inside of Ianto's forearm, then soothed the spot with tender kisses, soft as the wings of a Tomusiari butterfly. At Ianto's elbow he lingered, drawing spirals with his tongue until Ianto shivered and cupped his free hand around the back of Jack's head.
> 
> "Jack," he whispered.
> 
> "Shhh," said Jack. He slid upwards again and raised Ianto's arm up and onto the pillow above his head. Ianto rolled his eyes but let himself be manhandled into position. Jack nuzzled into Ianto's armpit, causing him to squeak and gasp. Jack grinned. Another erogenous zone that the 21st century didn't even know existed.
> 
> He kissed a line onto Ianto's chest and rasped his tongue over a nipple once, twice. Ianto's hand tightened on Jack's back and he moaned, the sound surprising both of them with its intensity. Jack made a pleased noise in return and repeated the action, then leaned across to the other nipple and sucked it hard into his mouth.
> 
> Ianto writhed underneath Jack, his hips working up into the air. Jack laughed and used one hand on a hip to hold him down.
> 
> "Jack, please," said Ianto.
> 
> "Soon," said Jack. He moved downward now, kissing the soft mound of Ianto's belly and sliding his cheek across it in a soft caress. He pressed kisses, open-mouthed and wet, to Ianto's hipbones and the hollow where his pelvis met his thighs. He sucked at the soft tissue of one thigh, half wanting to leave a mark even though no one else would ever see it.
> 
> "Jack," Ianto moaned. "Put your mouth on me, _please_."
> 
> "I thought that's what I've been doing," said Jack with a smile.
> 
> "On my cock, pigyn, come on," said Ianto.
> 
> "Bossy, bossy," said Jack. "And here I was going to give you the toe sucking of your life."
> 
> The sound Ianto made was half laugh, half moan.
> 
> "I don't know how you manage to make that sound good," he said. "Toes!"
> 
> "Next time," said Jack, putting all the promise he could muster into his voice. "But right now I want to show you one more thing. Turn over?"
> 
> There was a pleased glint in Ianto's eye as he did so. Jack took a moment to admire the sight before him. Ianto's back was long and lean, his muscles wiry, his arse firm and round. He looked, to Jack, almost like a sculpture, so still and yet so obviously full of life and sensuality. Jack wished he had Donatello here, now, so that Ianto like this could be preserved in stone, forever.
> 
> Smoothing his hands over Ianto's hips, Jack set one hand on each buttock and pulled them gently apart. Leaning in, he took a deep breath of Ianto's scent, mixed with the familiar smell of Torchwood's industrial soap. Then he slicked his tongue across Ianto's hole, holding the other man firmly in place as he shuddered in reaction.
> 
> "Jack!" said Ianto in a shocked voice. Jack brought his mouth down again, touching his tongue to the crinkled skin. He alternated licks with soft kisses, letting his head fall to the side and his eyelashes flutter against the surrounding skin.
> 
> Ianto panted more wildly with each press of Jack's mouth, hips thrusting his cock against the sheets in an irregular rhythm. He buried his face under the pillow. When Jack finally slipped his tongue past the ring of muscle, Ianto sobbed into the sheet, his hoarse cries fueling Jack's excitement. Jack fucked Ianto with his tongue, face dripping with saliva as he pressed closer and closer, fucked Ianto harder and harder until he came, shouting and shoving his arse back into Jack's face.

He's kissed Ianto everywhere, Jack suddenly realizes, everywhere except the mouth. At first it was only sex and comfort between them, and then later their games became more adventurous, were about fun and friendship and affection. But never mouths meeting in a kiss, Jack thinks. He doesn't count what happened the night Lisa almost killed them all; that was just (perhaps unorthodox) resuscitation. It wasn't really a kiss. That would have admitted the possibility of something more. The possibility of love.

Suddenly Jack wants that kiss, wants that possibility.

"If I get back," he tells himself, alone in the darkness, "I'm going to take it."


End file.
